Amazon's Star Engineer Has A Sweet Life, Lives On A Boat And Works From Hawaii

Meet James
Hamilton, a
distinguished engineer who is responsible for keeping Amazon's
$4.5 billion tech infrastructure business running while inventing
new ways to make itsdata centers more efficient.

He's responsible for keeping a
giant portion of the Internet up and running. Sites like
Netflix,
Pinterest, Reddit and Airbnb all
rely on Amazon's web services.

Hamilton is one of only a
handful of people allowed to talk and blog about Amazon's Web
Services publicly, reports
Wired's Robert McMillan. He's been at Amazon for just over four
years and came to fame at Microsoft
where he led a secretive group called the "Data Center Futures"
team. Microsoft
poached him from IBM.

But the coolest thing about Hamilton may be that he lives on a
boat, the Dirona.

About four years ago, James and Jennifer Hamilton sold their
house and their car and most of their worldly possessions, and
they moved
onto the Dirona. Now, when he’s berthed in Seattle, Hamilton
bikes to Amazon headquarters, does his shopping via Amazon Prime,
and picks up his mail at the local UPS store. But he’s
untethered. Sometimes, he takes the boat to Hawaii — and works
from there.

In short, he hacked his life. He rethought it and turned it into
something new. He’s the sort of person who’s willing to hack
anything, and that’s why Amazon wants him.

Now Watch: How To Get The Amazon Appstore on
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Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his
personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.